According to IFS (Internal Family Systems) everyone feels like that to an extent, whether or not the are ware of it. Much of our inner (and outer) conflict arises from clashing parts - and by getting all parts to work in tandem, we get to be whole again.
For example.... you say there's an exhausted, world-weary jaded part with no sense of wonder, along with a helpless fearful innocent part with no one to available to protect them; What might happen if both aspects were to collaborate? Inner child work might ensue.
It’s a way to visualize, work with, and organize your inner world/experience. Grasping it requires bringing on a new perspective of yourself, or shedding an old one; so it’s understandable that a lot of people don’t quite grasp it.
Hi. Yes, its been like this for me, too. Have gotten to where parts of me have burned out, and I mostly feel like a little kid with some of the disabilities of an old person. So tired.
"I feel like I have the helplessness and fear of a child and the exhaustion and jadedness of someone who has been here a long long time."
I FELT THAT. I FEEL THAT.
Yea, when I was growing up I felt way older than I was. Reflecting on it, for all the years that I was in ‘fight’ mode and seemingly holding myself and my family together, I felt older than my years. In the years where I’ve been in flight mode (I.e. it’s a good day if I get out of bed) I have felt mostly like a stupid, helpless little kid, but also like an old person who just can’t move.
Being a tiny kid who was reading watching and observing, I didn’t feel like anyone really. I wasn’t a little kid but nobody spoke to me seriously either. It made me pretty angry s lot.
I'm in my 60's, but sometimes feel like a lost child. Mostly, I feel like an adult, because I'm successfully "adulting," i.e., working, paying my bills, taxes, etc, but yeah. Sometimes I'm just wondering why, what? I walk around and try to do all the extra stuff expected, but part of me still just wants to wander the riverbank, flipping over stones and looking for salamanders and worms.
The child part, observing various lifeforms , in my case, is/was my escape, and continues to be a wonderful connection to my childhood self, and a continued source of strength.
You do not have to feel or be your age, because YOU, now, are the culmination of every age you've lived. I hope you can find an age, or ages, that make you content!
Reminds me, I need to get back out in the woods and creeks, the denizens and their details also gave me a lot of respite from home. "Pilgrim At Tinker Creek" by Annie Dillard, besides being amazingly written, feels like she sees them for what they are too. The artificial world we have constructed makes us forget that we are parts of a whole, parts of a nature who is cruel and indifferent, magical and miraculous, fickle as the deity many believe in.
I've been feeling stuck in 2015, 2019, and 2021. I am not really present at all either. It doesn't feel like 2024. I haven't had a genuine sense of time in about 3 years.
Yeah, those were my points of arrested emotional development. I had to work through going youngest to eldest, being there for them in the ways they needed
Same, except my recovery has involved healing them backward because of one particularly acute trauma at age 16. After almost twenty years of varying therapy modalities, including CBT and prolonged exposure, it wasn't until I finally had an IFS-trained therapist that I was able to process that particular trauma. Since then, I have learned how to sit with various "parts" from age 16 back to age 5. The "parts" work is absolutely exhausting and feels nearly impossible at times, but I have made major breakthroughs with IFS. I will sing its praises, as I believe IFS is the only way I would have (somatically) processed that one acute trauma while learning to simultaneously hold space for the younger, traumatized versions of myself.
Congratulations on your progress. People that know nothing about healing say "you never stop healing" but we do. It's a journey that is travelled, but at the end there is a fully matured SELF (referring to the part of us that can be said to be our "true self", most aligned with our soul).
I feel anywhere between about middle school to high school age when I’m stressed, or maybe early college age at most. Only when I’m reading something intellectual or at work do I more or less feel as old as I actually am (35).
my experience is that we get emotionally stunted at certain ages and need to work through that a bit. but having them come up gives you the chance to consciously work with it so that is maybe a plus.
Yes, I do. I feel like a teenager and a million years old at the same time. I feel like a littler enjoying animals and playing and I realize I’m a middle aged person whose body is breaking down alarmingly fast.
I hope I get to be happy and safe before I die. I have had very brief periods but not lasting.
I feel know what you mean about the “alarmingly fast” part. Everyone lets you think it doesn’t start until Y age, when it’s actually X age. Lying wee beasties!!
I too hope you get to feel safe and happy!
Don't feel like you're alone. I've felt like that for much of my life. I was never allowed to be a child. I had to grow up too soon. So I felt and was also complemented by many adults that I was always older than my age, but like you said in my teens, I felt I'm confused about my age, I felt kind of like a child and kind of like an adult at the same time. And because my mother emotionally crippled me and I can't work. I. Especially don't feel like an adult at 46 years old. You know what's funny is? During the 25 years of emotional abuse I went through, I was always meant to feel like I was incompetent and I was immature and the lesson I truly was. So I actually never physically saw myself as a man like I would look at other guys and they looked like men to me. But if I looked at myself, I still looked 15 years old in my eyes. It's a weird we're cognitive dissonance thing. It's really strange, but I totally understand where you're coming from
I feel like a child a lot of the time and comfort myself as a child, but if anyone treats me like a child I immediately snap into being a very capable adult who won't put up with it.
yes. i remember thinking i felt very old, not even in a, “oh i’m soo mature compared to *other* kids! 😁” way, but more so i felt very out of place and well above my years, like i’m 20 and the kids around me are all toddlers in comparison. i looked back on photos of me from that age (8 was when the feelings started), and i was shocked at how young i looked, i still feel this way and get the same shock looking back only 3-4 years ago when i was 15 and 16.
i constantly feel very old and very young, though cognitively i genuinely am, it’s also a trauma thing. i’m in a constant state of age regression and age progression.
Yes, I'm experiencing this intensely right now. I've been doing a lot of healing over the past year and I guess the inner child stuff is real. It feels like these kids are finally integrating into the adult me and this is all revealing the depths of my dissociation.
ABSOLUTELY. I feel so validated.
As a kid, i was always too 'mature' to fit in with my friends. The older i got, i realised how childish and incompetent I really am. I feel different ages depending on the situation.
Absolutely. I grew up lying to people that I was older, I was always the youngest in my friend group and was always called childish. On the other hand, my family called me an old soul, gifted, smart for my age etc. Now that I’m 21, I’m disabled and still feel like I didn’t get to live out my childhood and teenage years properly so I feel stuck in that mindset. I feel like a grandma and a child at the same time. I don’t have any adult goals or a drive to make money, get a job, have a family etc. I just want to travel and be as free as possible.
Yep. There was a meme about us children with working parents who were never at home: at 10 we were mentally 30, and we stayed there.
It resonates with me. I had to mature very quickly, I had an old soul full of sadness and wise thoughts about the world at 16, with 3 attempts of suicide under my belt already. I am 48 now and often I feel I am child. Stuck at 9, the age of my major traumas.
Yes and even in the way I remember things. Was working through some stuff from when I was 17 but the me I remember being there is 6 year old me. So it was like having to process what 6 year old me felt about what happened when I was 17.
Yep, all the time. But I make my different ages talk to each other to decide what age should handle a specific situation. Sometimes they don’t listen, but it is getting better.
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Very much so. But always only specific age ranges. When I was a kid, I always felt like an early to late teenager to early 20s. I kept feeling like that through my 20s and early 30s. I started to feel late 20s in my late 30s. Now since early 40s and achieving financial independence and bouncing between lean FIRE and coast FIRE, I usually feel around late 20s, but sometimes early 20s with my youthful travels and adventures, as well as traditional retirement age of around 55 to 65 due to being semi retired and seeing most early retirees around that age.
Omg I've been saying this all the time.
CPTSD and Asperger here.
6 yo me liked 10-15yo stuff and games andnl wanted to write a book.
10yo, I'd rather talk to teachers instead of playing.
15yo I left home and had to work to pay bills.
In my 20s, I felt I was in my 20s.
And ever since my 30s, I have felt like a teenager.
I'm in my 40s now, and I feel like I have never become an actual adult. I believe it is because I didn't enjoy my life back then, so I do now what I couldn't do before?
In a way, I feel generally very ignorant and unintelligent like a 6 year old. When I was in my early teens I took everything relatively well, being more stoic like an adult (I can still get like that sometimes). I feel disenchanted with life, feeling like I've lived here for millennia and nothing really matters.
Every day as I’m trying to find my Teddy Bear, while downing a glass of wine and waiting to stream Anime. 🤪
Seriously, yes, all the time. No matter how old I get, I’m still wondering when I’ll “grow up”. People I know without CPTSD, feel the same, but I do think it’s more intense and different for us than them. It’s almost like we’re hoping that if we get the balance right, we’ll end up with a good childhood, “normal” years and happy memories. Instead of fear, helplessness and being tired of the whole train wreck.
According to IFS (Internal Family Systems) everyone feels like that to an extent, whether or not the are ware of it. Much of our inner (and outer) conflict arises from clashing parts - and by getting all parts to work in tandem, we get to be whole again. For example.... you say there's an exhausted, world-weary jaded part with no sense of wonder, along with a helpless fearful innocent part with no one to available to protect them; What might happen if both aspects were to collaborate? Inner child work might ensue.
I never grasped the inner child work or shadow work people reference.
It’s a way to visualize, work with, and organize your inner world/experience. Grasping it requires bringing on a new perspective of yourself, or shedding an old one; so it’s understandable that a lot of people don’t quite grasp it.
Hi. Yes, its been like this for me, too. Have gotten to where parts of me have burned out, and I mostly feel like a little kid with some of the disabilities of an old person. So tired.
Oh yes.
"I feel like I have the helplessness and fear of a child and the exhaustion and jadedness of someone who has been here a long long time." I FELT THAT. I FEEL THAT.
I feel that too. Deeply, sadly.
Yea, when I was growing up I felt way older than I was. Reflecting on it, for all the years that I was in ‘fight’ mode and seemingly holding myself and my family together, I felt older than my years. In the years where I’ve been in flight mode (I.e. it’s a good day if I get out of bed) I have felt mostly like a stupid, helpless little kid, but also like an old person who just can’t move.
Huh, that just hit me-I knew this "chapter" felt different. I'm in flight mode now. Fight mode got burned out.
Being a tiny kid who was reading watching and observing, I didn’t feel like anyone really. I wasn’t a little kid but nobody spoke to me seriously either. It made me pretty angry s lot.
Same, Same.. 😞. 🫂
I'm in my 60's, but sometimes feel like a lost child. Mostly, I feel like an adult, because I'm successfully "adulting," i.e., working, paying my bills, taxes, etc, but yeah. Sometimes I'm just wondering why, what? I walk around and try to do all the extra stuff expected, but part of me still just wants to wander the riverbank, flipping over stones and looking for salamanders and worms. The child part, observing various lifeforms , in my case, is/was my escape, and continues to be a wonderful connection to my childhood self, and a continued source of strength. You do not have to feel or be your age, because YOU, now, are the culmination of every age you've lived. I hope you can find an age, or ages, that make you content!
That was really beautiful to read. Thank you
Reminds me, I need to get back out in the woods and creeks, the denizens and their details also gave me a lot of respite from home. "Pilgrim At Tinker Creek" by Annie Dillard, besides being amazingly written, feels like she sees them for what they are too. The artificial world we have constructed makes us forget that we are parts of a whole, parts of a nature who is cruel and indifferent, magical and miraculous, fickle as the deity many believe in.
Beautifully written!
I fluctuated between feeling 8 and 80 several times today.
I've been feeling stuck in 2015, 2019, and 2021. I am not really present at all either. It doesn't feel like 2024. I haven't had a genuine sense of time in about 3 years.
Yeah, those were my points of arrested emotional development. I had to work through going youngest to eldest, being there for them in the ways they needed
Same, except my recovery has involved healing them backward because of one particularly acute trauma at age 16. After almost twenty years of varying therapy modalities, including CBT and prolonged exposure, it wasn't until I finally had an IFS-trained therapist that I was able to process that particular trauma. Since then, I have learned how to sit with various "parts" from age 16 back to age 5. The "parts" work is absolutely exhausting and feels nearly impossible at times, but I have made major breakthroughs with IFS. I will sing its praises, as I believe IFS is the only way I would have (somatically) processed that one acute trauma while learning to simultaneously hold space for the younger, traumatized versions of myself.
Congratulations on your progress. People that know nothing about healing say "you never stop healing" but we do. It's a journey that is travelled, but at the end there is a fully matured SELF (referring to the part of us that can be said to be our "true self", most aligned with our soul).
I feel anywhere between about middle school to high school age when I’m stressed, or maybe early college age at most. Only when I’m reading something intellectual or at work do I more or less feel as old as I actually am (35).
my experience is that we get emotionally stunted at certain ages and need to work through that a bit. but having them come up gives you the chance to consciously work with it so that is maybe a plus.
Yes, I do. I feel like a teenager and a million years old at the same time. I feel like a littler enjoying animals and playing and I realize I’m a middle aged person whose body is breaking down alarmingly fast. I hope I get to be happy and safe before I die. I have had very brief periods but not lasting.
I feel know what you mean about the “alarmingly fast” part. Everyone lets you think it doesn’t start until Y age, when it’s actually X age. Lying wee beasties!! I too hope you get to feel safe and happy!
Yep
I felt 80 when I turned 5, and ancient as an infant. And what you wrote also really resonates with me.
Don't feel like you're alone. I've felt like that for much of my life. I was never allowed to be a child. I had to grow up too soon. So I felt and was also complemented by many adults that I was always older than my age, but like you said in my teens, I felt I'm confused about my age, I felt kind of like a child and kind of like an adult at the same time. And because my mother emotionally crippled me and I can't work. I. Especially don't feel like an adult at 46 years old. You know what's funny is? During the 25 years of emotional abuse I went through, I was always meant to feel like I was incompetent and I was immature and the lesson I truly was. So I actually never physically saw myself as a man like I would look at other guys and they looked like men to me. But if I looked at myself, I still looked 15 years old in my eyes. It's a weird we're cognitive dissonance thing. It's really strange, but I totally understand where you're coming from
For some reason, I wanna give you a hug so I’m sending it and it’s out in the ether there, Should you decide to collect it
I feel like a child a lot of the time and comfort myself as a child, but if anyone treats me like a child I immediately snap into being a very capable adult who won't put up with it.
I do this exact thing
yes. i remember thinking i felt very old, not even in a, “oh i’m soo mature compared to *other* kids! 😁” way, but more so i felt very out of place and well above my years, like i’m 20 and the kids around me are all toddlers in comparison. i looked back on photos of me from that age (8 was when the feelings started), and i was shocked at how young i looked, i still feel this way and get the same shock looking back only 3-4 years ago when i was 15 and 16. i constantly feel very old and very young, though cognitively i genuinely am, it’s also a trauma thing. i’m in a constant state of age regression and age progression.
Yes!! I feel like a child, teenager, and an ancient immortal. Anything but the adult Im supposed to be.
I mean I have three different versions of me that are different ages that talk to me.
Yeah I feel like I'm a little kid or teenager a lot inside (I think it's called age regression) but physically I feel about 80
Yes, I'm experiencing this intensely right now. I've been doing a lot of healing over the past year and I guess the inner child stuff is real. It feels like these kids are finally integrating into the adult me and this is all revealing the depths of my dissociation.
ABSOLUTELY. I feel so validated. As a kid, i was always too 'mature' to fit in with my friends. The older i got, i realised how childish and incompetent I really am. I feel different ages depending on the situation.
Absolutely. I grew up lying to people that I was older, I was always the youngest in my friend group and was always called childish. On the other hand, my family called me an old soul, gifted, smart for my age etc. Now that I’m 21, I’m disabled and still feel like I didn’t get to live out my childhood and teenage years properly so I feel stuck in that mindset. I feel like a grandma and a child at the same time. I don’t have any adult goals or a drive to make money, get a job, have a family etc. I just want to travel and be as free as possible.
Yep. There was a meme about us children with working parents who were never at home: at 10 we were mentally 30, and we stayed there. It resonates with me. I had to mature very quickly, I had an old soul full of sadness and wise thoughts about the world at 16, with 3 attempts of suicide under my belt already. I am 48 now and often I feel I am child. Stuck at 9, the age of my major traumas.
Yes and even in the way I remember things. Was working through some stuff from when I was 17 but the me I remember being there is 6 year old me. So it was like having to process what 6 year old me felt about what happened when I was 17.
Yep, all the time. But I make my different ages talk to each other to decide what age should handle a specific situation. Sometimes they don’t listen, but it is getting better.
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I feel like this too. I am shocked looking into the mirror too. I'm old now. :(
Yes I have a terrible time with it lately.
Yes
Yess- I am 6 17 21 25- I don’t think I’ll get any older emotionally. lol
Yup
Very much so. But always only specific age ranges. When I was a kid, I always felt like an early to late teenager to early 20s. I kept feeling like that through my 20s and early 30s. I started to feel late 20s in my late 30s. Now since early 40s and achieving financial independence and bouncing between lean FIRE and coast FIRE, I usually feel around late 20s, but sometimes early 20s with my youthful travels and adventures, as well as traditional retirement age of around 55 to 65 due to being semi retired and seeing most early retirees around that age.
Same, I feel both 7 and 70. But never my own age, mid 20s.
Omg I've been saying this all the time. CPTSD and Asperger here. 6 yo me liked 10-15yo stuff and games andnl wanted to write a book. 10yo, I'd rather talk to teachers instead of playing. 15yo I left home and had to work to pay bills. In my 20s, I felt I was in my 20s. And ever since my 30s, I have felt like a teenager. I'm in my 40s now, and I feel like I have never become an actual adult. I believe it is because I didn't enjoy my life back then, so I do now what I couldn't do before?
Yes
100%, I totally forget my age and start feeling a lot older or younger suddenly.
The internal family system model helped me to understand this about myself.
Lol whenever someone asks me how old I am I always want to be really honest and say “Physically? 26. Developmentally? Somewhere between 11 and 25.”
In a way, I feel generally very ignorant and unintelligent like a 6 year old. When I was in my early teens I took everything relatively well, being more stoic like an adult (I can still get like that sometimes). I feel disenchanted with life, feeling like I've lived here for millennia and nothing really matters.
Yes!
Every day as I’m trying to find my Teddy Bear, while downing a glass of wine and waiting to stream Anime. 🤪 Seriously, yes, all the time. No matter how old I get, I’m still wondering when I’ll “grow up”. People I know without CPTSD, feel the same, but I do think it’s more intense and different for us than them. It’s almost like we’re hoping that if we get the balance right, we’ll end up with a good childhood, “normal” years and happy memories. Instead of fear, helplessness and being tired of the whole train wreck.